Apple is aiming to get off the back foot when it comes to phone features with the forthcoming release of iPhone firmware - hopefully before the Googlephone gets into circulation.
Google, along with T-Mobile, made great play of the ability of the G1 - the first handset based on Google's Android platform - to display Street View …

Apple besieged again?

Riddle me this: Google trawls miles of public highways and byways to add Street Views, the as yet unreleased G1 adds it to it's list of killer apps and forces Apple on the 'backfoot', alas, when that same item comes to the iPhone it turns into a pointless feature, natch.

Define 'background'?

My iPod touch receives push notifications of e-mail when I've got other things running (it 'pings' at me at exactly the same moment my Mac does, give or take half a second, when new mail arrives)

Are you perhaps confusing push e-mail notification with the generic push notifications SDK which was removed during the 2.1 beta timeframe, and is expected to make a return once Apple is damned sure it's got the infrastructure right for running it?

BlackBerry already has streetview...

Push disabled?

Push email wasn't disabled in 2.1, mine still works happily.

I think you're getting confused with the push service that'll allow app store programs to receive push information without running in the background, for example, IM programs can receive IMs without having to be running.

This feature was supposed to be in 2.1, but was removed from a late beta, so they could focus on fixing all the broken stuff.

What?? Push e-mail is working fine in 2.1

It's just conjecture that push e-mail has been removed from 2.1 - it's working just fine with my MS Exchange server. There appears to be a bug which is affecting *automatic polling* for e-mail, but *push e-mail* works as it always did.

Re: What?? Push e-mail is working fine in 2.1

Some iPhone users are certainly having problems with pushed e-mail, though others report possible fixes and point to the re-introduction of push notifications coming in version 2.2 as a solution to their problems, as shown in the support thread linked from the piece.

How about turn-by-turn GPS

Turn by Turn GPS is the single thing that stops us considering the iPhone for our company (I could just about live without cut and paste !). My next phone will probably be the HTC Touch HD for this very reason.

@BlackBerry already has streetview...

Clueless reporting

Why has the Register seemingly lost all vestiges of reporting ability. If you're going to report on something, at least try and get some accuracy into things.

Apple DID NOT remove push e-mail notifications from firmware 2.1 - it still fully supports MobileMe push and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync DirectPush. What was removed was the as yet unreleased application push framework which is completely separate from Email push notifications.

The Register is quickly losing all credibility as a "serious" technical site - when was the last time you actually managed to report something accurately as far as the iPhone is concerned?

@Ivan Headache

>My iPod touch shows me where I am. It doesn't tell me where to go - I make that decision.

>I think a company ought to have more faith in the intelligence of its employees.

Ever tried driving through a strange city trying to find a location you have never heard of before ? I suspect you wouldnt be very popular with the local traffic police when you have to stop every few hundred yards to check the screen on your Pod :)

The point behind turn-by-turn traffic systems (TomTom et al) is that you dont need to look at the screen while driving(spoken instructions) and a little common sense usually means you avoid driving into rivers.

@ Graham Lockley

"The point behind turn-by-turn traffic systems (TomTom et al) is that you dont need to look at the screen while driving(spoken instructions) and a little common sense usually means you avoid driving into rivers."

Push was never switched off

I've always had push email from a Kerio server in 2 and 2.1. Even after a long period of inactivity (overnight) my mails are waiting for me.

Now when it comes to App notifications, it's a shame this has been temporarily removed. As when working properly will be able to notify when someone has continued an IM and you're no longer i the app, when someone calls on a voip line and doesn't leave a message to email etc. Not quite sure what went wrong with this as surely very similar to push email.

arse and elbow

"Apple is aiming to get off the back foot"

Why do you think Apple are on the back foot? Because they don't have street view? Is this one of those jokey posts...?

"Google...made great play of the ability of the G1....to display Street View" What does this tell you? Maybe they didn't have much else to show off? I don't know....I mean the phone looked pretty good (for geeks! did you see the differences between screens??!) but I guess google have invested quite some time and money in street view so want to push it out there.

The forum post you mention talks about IMAP. IMAP is not push. The device polls the imap enabled mailserver every 15, 30 60 mins, or never (i..e manually). For the record my iphone works perfectly well. Obviously some users will have problems various features, there are always bugs. This doesn't mean to say apple have removed the fetch functionality used to retrieve email from IMAP servers.

"iPhone, and Android, are forced to use standard protocols over TCP/IP connections"

OK, most stuff works over TCP/IP (or maybe UDP/IP). And anyway, I'm not sure if mobileme uses a standard app level protocol or not but the system does use technology that sends a 'wake-up' packet(s) to the device (over IP) in order to inform it of changes (i.e. new email or contacts update). I doubt this is a standard app level protocol but I don't know for sure.

"owners lording it over their iPhone-touting mates with a cool...feature"

I don't think that the G1 will impact Iphone feel good factor much. I don't really think they attract the same kind of buyer. G1 is much more of a techie device, open; quirky, rough around the edges. It may be able to demonstrate some cool things but then so can an N82. Nokia maps and QIK work on N82. Nothing like nokia maps or QIK on iphone but I don't see the N82 boys lording it over the iPhone crowd. Obviously the G1 is a different kettle of fish to N82 but have you seen the user interface? Someone shows me google streetview? I show them London Cam, and that's before I get started on the user interface, which apple make top priority and with good reason.

Basic Features First!

How about Apple working on very basic mobile phone features before rolling out stuff like these which, cool as they are to some people, are ultimately not needed by a majority of users. Oh, I don't know, something like SMS FORWARDING MAYBE?!?!?!

@Bill Ray

"I'm probably guilty of over-simplification, sorry for any confusion."

Nice try, but no cigar.

While it appears there may be some isolated cases of push email having some issues (which is just as likely to be a fault with the MobileMe service as it is with the iPhone), you stated in the article that "Also waiting for version 2.2 are iPhone users wanting push email to work in the background, a feature that was removed with version 2.1 of the iPhone firmware." The only feature that was pulled from the 2.1 firmware was the push notification for 3rd party app's - and that was simply pulled from the last beta release and so was never released to the general iPhone userbase in the first place. It is not over-simplification to talk about two completely different features as the same thing just because they share a word - it's just inaccurate and plain wrong!

Push email has always worked in the background since it was introduced in firmware 2.0 - that's the whole point of push! Does it work flawlessly? Apparently not (at least not for some) - but that is a million miles away from stating that the feature has been removed. Lrn2Jrn!